The best
homeschooling information
from the friendliest folks in the Rocky Mountain
region!
Cyberspace Changes Everything
... which is also known as The Answer to the
Burning Question: Who the heck am I and why in the
world do I have a homeschool
website?
DE-Schooling
The first time I felt how great my own deschooling
needs were was during those first few shaky months. By
Pattie Donahue-Krueger
The Six Lesson Schoolteacher
"Keep in mind as I speak that I spent 26 years in
public school classrooms. My perspective is that of an
insider, not an outsider. You have been warned." By
John Taylor Gatto
Viral
Learning: Reflections on The Homeschooling Life
Now that active homeschooling was coming to an end for
our family, I found myself pondering its long-term
effects. By Mary Griffith, bestselling author of
The Homeschooling Handbook and The
Unschooling Handbook.
Sponsored Links
When I first began homeschooling back in the olden days
(better known as 1993), the internet wasn't what it is
today. In fact, you could've called it more of an
exotic concept than an actual reality. Sounds funny
now, but remember the www wasn't available to us common
folk until 1991. Before that it was a private,
exclusive network, only accessible to schools,
government entities and lovable, problem-solving geeks
in movies like War Games. By the end of '92, there were
a total of 80 - 100 websites all told (and no, I didn't
ask Al Gore). "Being online" wasn't the norm. If I had
to guesstimate, I'd say, oh maybe 30-40% of
homeschoolers were online. (with 14.4 bps modems no
less) (via Prodigy, AOL or Compuserve) Now, I was
online myself (are you kidding? I had 3 techies in the
house. of course I was). I remember having to
constantly explain the internet to my homeschooling
friends. "WWW means World Wide Web." "A website is sort
of like a street address you tell your computer to
drive to." "A mailing list is a place where you type
messages and talk to other people. In real time. Like
you're sitting in the same room with them." Most people
thought I was a little nuts.
I look back in the old RMEC newsletters and at late as
January, 1998, I was still explaining. In that issue I
wrote, "Since I'm on
the Internet so much, I get lots of questions about
being online. The biggest ones are,
'Is
it really worth it to get on the 'net?'
or
'Now
that I'm finally here, how do I go about finding all
those internet . . . umm . . . things?'
This new RMEC feature
is meant to help answer both questions. Starting with
this issue, I will list the the www address, and
description for each site, and explain exactly how to
get there ..."
At the end of that paragraph I added a
:-) but hardly anybody knew what it
meant. Most thought it was a typo.
And yes, we capitalized the word "Internet" back then.
It was A Proper Noun. A Very Important Place. We were
so impressed with it, I'm rather surprised we didn't
capitalize the whole thing: The
Internet.
Now there was plenty of homeschooling information to be
had even without all this cyberspace stuff. The trick
was, you had to know who to ask. Basically it worked
like this: You had a friend, who had a friend, who knew
a friend's aunt's brother-in-law, who would then tell
you about this spiffy resource he'd found.
Homeschoolers across neighborhoods, cities, states and
the entire USA networked like this. We relied on
word-of-mouth, phone calls, paper newsletters, and our
most important lifeline of all; local support groups.
We collected homeschool newsletters, magazines,
curriculum brochures, over-copied math worksheets,
handwritten play-dough recipes. The collection
eventually made up our personal Homeschooling How-To
Guide, but it wasn't something you accomplished in a
week or a month, or even three. Imagine building a
small house from scratch on a skimpy budget. Every new
shingle was a find. Every ounce of paint a precious gem
to be treasured, and never, ever, ever thrown
away.
So here we are in the Information Age. Does that it hinder or help? A little of both, I think. Between the homeschooling boom, and the web 2.0 explosion, finding information isn't much of a problem. It's the sifting that's become the challenge. Homeschooling info seems to be everywhere. It's practically falling out of the sky. Rather like having the entire Library of Congress suddenly dumped in your lap. Which is handy, but how do you tell the good from the bad? If I were just beginning to homeschool, I know I'd be in wandering about in Confused Overload Mode.
Now, we used to hope that homeschooling would become more acceptable, part of the mainstream, more popular the world over. Wouldn't that be wonderful! we exclaimed. Wouldn't that be great! We can share our homeschooling joys with the world! Yippee! Well, we got our wish. And now we've become A Market. Oy vey. It's a mixed blessing. The good part is, strangers in the grocery store don't look at us like we're from Pluto anymore. The bad is seeing the dizzying slew of websites that have sprung up, for no other reason than to make money off of you (and me). They're very pretty and oh-so-cleverly-designed, these places, but where's the beef? Where's the useful information?
You won't find any of that phony baloney here. No sirree. RMEC is a site run by a homeschooler, for homeschoolers. Sure, it'd be great if you bought something new like a book while you were here visiting, or donated to paypal to keep me in milk and cocoa puffs and maybe some gas in my car, but I'm not marketing to you. I just do this to help out and give back. (Okay, I also like writing.) But, really, we homeschoolers have lots more practice sifiting and separating the wheat from the chaff. And each one of us has assembled our own special box over the years, brimming with an amazing array of wondrous, marvelous things. And when you network us together like this -- happy day and hot dog! - it IS just like having the Library of Congress (The Home[schooling] Version) at your fingertips. My hope is that our combined knowledge helps make the box you're preparing for the next generation the best one yet.
It's a fine adventure, homeschooling. So. Where would you like to go next?
© 1999-2008 Cindy Englan
The way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe just as long as you're sincere.
- Charles Schultz